


One Last Piece of Candy

by Windian



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon GO
Genre: Other, dark!fic, non-binary!Blanche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 06:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8479483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: Professor Willow would have trainers around the world believe they are collecting pokemon for research purposes. The truth is much more insidious-- an organisation digging deep into the dirtiest corners of the black market, Professor Willow is a dark candyman: a purveyor of raw refined pokemon power, mined and crushed from weak and inferior pokemon. Taken in by Professor Willow as a child, Blanche is drawn far too deep into the organisation to escape its claws.





	

“We have an informant in our midst.” Professor’s Willow’s words are dry, clipped.

About to take a sip of their tea, Blanche pauses. The two of them are sat in the Professor’s office: the walls and door are soundproofed, and there’s no possible way to be overheard. Blanche sets their cup back in the saucer with a gentle clatter. “How do you know?” they ask.

“Our pokemon quota is down. Someone is siphoning the supply off, to put into their own personal pocket. It’s been happening for months.”

“One of the members of our teams?” Blanche says.

“No. It’s far too large a leak.”

What he doesn’t need to say aloud: that the leak itself must be coming from them, Candela or Spark.

Professor Willow shows no emotion, but Blanche can tell that he’s scrutinising them, analysing for any sign of guilt.

But Blanche has no guilt for the professor to read. They themselves have no interest in lining their pockets: their interest in this operation is purely intellectual. A few years back Blanche had made the discovery that a pokemon’s potential could be refined into pure ore— the substance the trainers knew as “candy.” None of the trainers never questioned what this substance was, or why the team leaders traded it for the pokemon they had captured. All they were interested in— _all humans are ever interested in_ , thinks Blanche— is the power it could give them.

It’s all so tiringly predictable.

Blanche, bored, takes a long, strong sip of their tea. “Well, it’s not me. But if you wish to investigate me, I won’t be offended.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I think you and I both know where this leak has to be coming from.”

Another drink of their tea. Slowly, Blanche nods. “If it’s not myself, and obviously, it’s not Spark—”

“Obviously.”

Poor, dumb Spark. All this time, he’d been led to believe they were catching pokemon for “research.”

Technically, that is true, Blanche thinks, but they doubt the boy would be so eager if they knew what manner of research they were conducting. Or the fact that the fruit of such research ended on the shadier avenues of the black market.

“Candela’s always been power hungry,” Blanche remarks, as casual as though the two of them were discussing the football game.

“It seems that at last, she’s overstepped her bounds,” Willow says. “I’d hoped you could lead the interrogation, Blanche. You’ve always known how to handle her.”

Blanche sets their cup down in the saucer with a melancholy, but resolute clatter. “If I must.”

 

*

 

“Wow! Look at all those pokemon! Team instinct, you’re all doing amazing!”

Blanche finds Candela and Spark in the Sorting Room. All of their trainers, all over the world-- and this is where the pokemon they send end up.  Dozens of conveyor belts and tubes criss-cross the room, conveying the pokeballs to all corners of the facility. All unwanted pokemon: they would be sorted into the few, rare pokemon Blanche wished to study, and the rest— those would be sent to the secure facility where they would be crunched down into candy.

Once processed into the pure ore, those useless, inferior pokemon would find a new purpose— powering up superior pokemon.

Spark raises a hand to wave the pokeballs a goodbye, his fearrow fluttering around his shoulders. “Bye guys! Have fun at the Pokemon retreat!”

“I don’t know about your team, Spark, I have to say that team Valor has been on fire this week,” Candela says, with a mischievous grin, leaning back against the pokemon processor. “You’ve going to have to work hard to catch up.”

“Yeah! You’ve been doing great too, Candela!”

As Blanche approaches, Candela turns to them, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s no fun trying to tease him, is it? It just rolls straight off him like water off a duck’s back.”

“That’s statistically impossible,” Blanche says.

“Just like trying to tell a joke to you…” Candela sighs, clapping a hand on Blanche’s back. She leans in close enough that her lips skim Blanche’s ear, sending an unwilling chill down their spine. “The professor seems kind of on edge today. Has something happened?”

“I actually need to speak to you about that. In private,” Blanche murmurs back.

Spark’s eyes dart between the two of them curiously. “What are you two whispering about?”

“Filthy things,” Candela says brazenly, and Spark’s eyes go wide.

As much as they will it away, Blanche can’t stop their face from colouring. “That’s completely! I mean—!”

“Blanche here is kinda shy about that sort of thing, so we’re gonna go make out for a bit now, kay?” Candela says, pulling her arm around Blanche and pulling them closer. Blanche squirms, but Candela is remarkably strong.

“Kay! Shall I carry on processing the pokemon while you’re gone?”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks Spark!” says Candela.

“No prob. Have fun guys!” He even gives them a little wave.

By the time Blanche has squirmed out of Candela’s grip outside of the door, their face is beet red.

“You. Are. Incorrigible.”

“I’m what now?” Candela asks, grin wide, unrepentant.

“Illiterate, apparently,” Blanche spits. Candela silences their rhetoric with a kiss, hot and hard, pushing Blanche back against the corridor wall, fingernails digging into wrists and raking against scalps.

“I thought we were finished with all this?” Blanche pants, when Candela pulls back, and their head has stopped spinning.

“I missed the way you taste.” As always, Candela speaks so brazenly, as though she proud of this behaviour, that Blanche can do nothing but turn their head away.

“Remind me why you thought starting this again was a good idea,” they say.

“For someone so full of ardour...” As Candela speaks, she wipes away the speck of blood on her lip, where Blanche had bitten them, “you sure can be a frighteningly cold bastard, Blanche.”

“Perhaps so,” Blanche says, and with one hand they push Candela back from their space, straightening the collar of their coat.

Candela hides a smirk when Blanche fails to notice the smudge of lipstick on their neck.

“Now come,” says Blanche. “As I mentioned, there’s important business we must discuss.”

As they hold their office door open for Candela, and their colleague and once lover steps right into the trap that’s been laid for her, Blanche feels a twinge of something that, if they didn’t know better, would seem like guilt.

 

*

 

Scientifically, victims find the darkness oppressive— the lights, confusing and disorientating. Both persuasive elements in convincing an interrogatee to confess more quickly and effectively.

Blanche knows this because, like most things, they read it in a book.

Disappointingly, however, this persuasive technique seems to hold no thrall over Candela, who has been bound, her hands tied, and has spent several hours gagged in the darkness. She struggles against her bindings, eyes enraged, spit flying as she shouts, “I told you, I didn’t do anything!”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Candela. You know I take no pleasure in violence,” Blanche says, voice even.

In response, with the same lips that earlier had kissed so ardently, Candela spits in their face. Still with that same measure of calm, Blanche wipes the glob of saliva away with a handkerchief from their pocket, and backhands Candela hard enough to turn her head, the sound crackling like a whip.

Candela thrusts her jaw up to look Blanche straight in the eyes, her cheek reddened— within a few hours, Blanche thinks, the blood will rise to the surface to mend the flesh, and she’ll sport an ugly looking bruise. Candela’s eyes are full of fire, but her voice is deadly calm: “You’re being tricked, Blanche. I don’t know who’s behind the leak, but it’s not me. I’d never betray you.”

There’s a strength to her a words— a sincerity, that makes Blanche hesitate. But they bite the feeling— the feeling of weakness— down. “Then who do you propose is behind this? Spark?” they scoff.

Candela shakes her head. “It could even be the Professor, Blanche. Have you thought of that? He must have all the candy he could ever need, now. What if he wants to be rid of us?”

Blanche strikes her again. The other cheek, this time, hand smacking against Candela’s face with the crack of thunder. But they can’t hold back the waver in their voice: “The Professor raised me, Candela. He would never throw us away like this. I know him.”

Once again, Candela raises her bruised, heavy head. “So do I. Which is why I think he’s entirely capable.”

 

*

 

In the top floor apartment of the towering glass skyscraper, Blanche paces. Blanche’s suite is the penthouse— a large open-plan apartment with wide glass windows overlooking the electric skyline.

Normally, Blanches loves the open space, the feeling of being a part of and encompassing everything, but today, despite the city splayed out like a picture postcard before them, they can’t escape out of the confines of their own head.

Changed out of their close-fitting wetsuit, Blanche wears a loose silken nightgown that laps around their ankles like waves. Their hair is loose, pushed over the back of their shoulder. In their hand, a glass of red wine Blanche can’t remember pouring, as they pace, and pace.

A thought Blanche can’t swallow down: _What if I’ve made a mistake?_

Blanche does not make mistakes. Occasionally, an error born from incorrect statistics arises, and is easily amended.

Yet Blanche does not think this is an error that can be fixed.

Candela had been bundled off downstairs, back into the dark, to be left until she cracks. Yet her words flash through Blanche’s mind _: I’d never betray you._

Professor Willow had raised Blanche. When their parents had died, he’d been the one to take them in, to teach them everything he knew. All of their skills: how to tackle a problem with logic, instead of being burdened by emotion.

But this was an angle they’ve never considered: that Willow had moulded Blanche into his own shape, to be as cold, and ruthless and callous as himself.

Blanche slams their fist against the window, bowing their head to press against the cold glass. They ask themselves: what are they doing? Why are they involved in any of this?

There’s a rap at the door. Blanche breathes heavily, and then slowly, as though it’s an equation they’re working out, adds the numbers and puts themselves back together. By the time they answer the door, their face wears no expression at all.

Until they they open the door to find Spark, clutching at his mobile phone with tears in his eyes as though he’s about to cry.

“Spark. What’s wrong?”

“Can I come in?” he asks, barely holding himself together.

“Of course. Take a seat,” Blanche says. They lower themselves in their armchair, but Spark is too upset to sit down. He continues to pace.

“What’s wrong?” they ask.

“It’s Candela,” Spark says in a rush. “I can’t find her, and she’s not picking up her phone, either. No one’s seen her since this morning.”

A stab of something hits Blanche in the gut. They will their hands to be steady. “I’m sure she’s fine, Spark. You know what she’s like… one of the trainers probably contacted her about a rare pokemon and she went out, guns blazing, and forgot to leave us a message.”

“That’s what everyone’s been saying— but Candela never goes anywhere without her phone.” Spark’s pacing becomes faster, his brows strung together and eyes wild. “What if she’s been hurt, Blanche? She could have been ambushed by Team Rocket, and we’d have no idea. She could be hurt, and everyone’s just sitting here.”

Why couldn’t I be more like Spark? Blanche asks themselves. Spark, who cares for his friends, who has never thought of pokemon in terms of superior and inferior. Who care for them all, equally— even the weakling pidgey and zubat.

Two years ago, he’d come to them. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ready to work. And they’d all taken advantage of him.

Under their breath, Blanche starts to chuckle.

Spark stops, dead in their tracks. “W-what’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking. If you put every single person in the organisation together, they still wouldn’t amount to half a good a person as you are, Spark.”

Spark’s eyes are wide with confusion. “Blanche… why are you saying something like that?”

“Because it’s true.” A hiccough interrupts them, and Blanche buries their face in their hands, silver hair spilling over their shoulder. “If only you knew the things I’ve done, Spark.”

Blanche has multiplied together all the numbers, but they no longer seem to add up. Soft hiccoughs rack their body, and suddenly, Blanche feels something cold, pressing against their head.

For a moment, Blanche thinks someone else must be in the room with them, because the voice that speaks is far too cold, too emotionless, to come from Spark: “I already do,” he says.

Blanche feels a cold chill run through them. They turn their head slowly, to find the barrel of a gun pressed against their head.

“S-spark? What are you—?” But the man with the guy to their head is not their colleague, but a man with a cold sneer, wearing Spark’s skin. Surely it can’t be Spark, because Blanche cannot imagine the boy she knows wearing so cold, so merciless an expression.

It all clicks into place.

“Spark, you— does Professor Willow know—”

“Professor Willow is dead,” says Spark.

“Then it wasn’t him who betrayed us…”

“Bingo. It was me,” says Spark, with his winning grin.

“Why, Spark?”

Spark jabs the gun harder into their temple. “And here I thought you were supposed to be the intelligent one. Did you really believe I could be so ignorant of the operation going on? It was so easy for you and Candela to look down on me, wasn’t it? I heard the things you said about me. Poor dumb, naive Spark. And now look how the tables have turned.”

“Spark… what is it you want from me?”

“Nothing. I’d considered that you might be able to remain as a part of the operation— my operation— but now I see you’re ruled by emotion as much as that fool Candela is. You’d just be a liability.”

The cold metal stabs into Blanche’s head. Underneath their chest, their heart is pounding like a baby bird. A thousand regrets tumble incoherently through their head. And most of all, they see Candela, face beaten and bruised, gazing up at them through their pain with her ever fierce, ever indomitable eyes.

“You’re weak, Blanche,” Spark says, before he pulls the trigger.

 

*

 

“Yes, that’s right. Both Mystic and Valor are to be merged with Instinct. Yes. If you could let all the trainers know as soon as you can. See if you can add out some extra incentives— I want more pokemon coming in, and I want the refinement process streamlined. Yes. That’s fine. I’ll talk to you soon.” With a click of a button, Spark ends the call. With a loud yawn, he swings his legs up onto Professor Willow’s desk, arms folded behind his head.

At last, everything is in its natural order. After all, he considers, bravery is all well and good, until it ends in rash hot-headed foolishness. And wisdom is, after all, no more than a kind of arrogance. But, when it comes down to it, everyone can rely on their instincts.

It’s just a shame they couldn’t manage to get all the blood out of the carpet.

  
  



End file.
